Behind This Urban Indonesia Project


The United Nations has forecast that more than 70 percent of the global population will be living in urban areas by 2035, in the backdrop of inevitably accelerated urbanization as piecemeal and fragmented initiatives to develop rural areas fail to put the brake on the population shift.

Urban areas are undoubtedly facing unprecedented consequences of that population boom. Urban spheres are getting narrowed and choked by the growth in population who demand the fulfillment of living quarters and other provisions of basic necessities.

Urbanites, the people living in the metropolis, have to face novel problems which become more chronic even complicated day by day. Solutions brought to the table to re-engineer the space, road, job opportunities, will face a dead end. The city will no longer an environ that supports standard urban living.

Aforementioned concerns gave birth to these virtual pages. To borrow the duality of structure and agency in which structure refers to the universal lived reality, while the agency refers to the Man with his interaction with the society, this Urban Indonesia project will be focusing on the agency's efforts to go beyond any circumstance in finding solutions to every problem he faces.

Agency, came from the Latin word of agere means to act, promises man's boundless capacity to go beyond challenges, including urban woes. The man's capability to reflect, evaluate, look for solution despite all constraints and restrictions he has is the emphasis for this project.

The urban realities in Indonesia are multifaceted since every city carries its own history, heritage and unique legacy. For that reason, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that applies to all cities. Even though the globalization tends to deny such uniqueness and sideline cultural, economic and political identities of each city, including the identities of the urbanites, the globalization in urban level will always meet insurgents who stand up to fight in the name of identity.

The opposition, to some extent, took some extreme forms that sometimes define a clear and rigid border: your group versus their group, friends against foes. Standing in between, as the role taken majority population nowadays no longer suffices to follow the new rules of the game in the community  and nation-state living. Conflicts are inevitable since the social and cultural glue dissipates while the modern instruments belonging to the nation-state have yet to assume authority to become a fair judge.

The Urban Indonesia project is willing to take part in the discourse to empower the urban man so that he can recreate new patterns in his interaction with new habitat which is more ethical and humane in one side and look for best practices to mend the urban structure which is more friendly to the urbanites.

In seeing such complexity and super-wide coverage of this urban discourse in Indonesia, this project is meant to be a stepping stone towards more inclusive collaboration with all related and concerned parties from multidisciplinary, urban institutions and authorities with the high hopes that through these simple philosophical endeavors, every city will become a better home for the urbanites to find their true humanity and  identity.

This project is sustained by the line of social entrepreneurship program, also uses the same name. It aims at providing professional service dedicated towards the development of digitally literate urban community of Indonesia.

Thank you!

Urban Indonesia